A year on from our first interview with Trash Boat at Slam Dunk 2015, we joined them again at 2000 Trees Festival in Gloucester to discuss their debut album Nothing I Write You Can Change What You’ve Been Through.
The band have gone from strength to strength since their last EP Brainwork, which took the pop-punk scene by storm, including a tour with Less Than Jake and slots at both Reading and Download this Summer. We spoke to Trash Boat about how 2016 became their most exciting year so far.
Right, so it’s been a year since we last spoke. What’s happened for you in 2016?
We put out our debut album, we’ve just come off our headline tour which we were really happy with. 8 dates in a row with 1 day off.
During the recording of that record you were recording with Dan “Soupy” Campbell from The Wonder Years. How did you swing that?
Well, we wanted to do it so we just reached out to Hopeless Records. Soupy had never done it before and we thought that, well, we might as well ask, since the worst he can do is say no. And it turned out he was happy to do it as his first producing job. We’re glad we did it with him. It went really well.
That must have been a pretty intense moment for you guys.
Yeah, Soupy showing up at St Albans’ The Pioneer to do pre-production with us? It was pretty surreal!
He actually came down to your home town?
Yeah. He stayed with us.
“IT WAS PRETTY SURREAL!”
So how did it go from that to him actually featuring on a Trash Boat track?
That was pretty natural, to be honest. We had no lyrics for the bit in ‘Strangers’ and we were all thinking – ‘Let’s get Soupy on that.’ And he turned around and said he had lyrics for it. It was one of those things were we didn’t really want to ask, and I don’t think he wanted to say. Then all of sudden he said ‘I wanna do this’ and we said ‘yeah… want you to do that.’
So where did you end up recording?
Regal House Studios in Wisbech with Lee Batiuk. That was good.
And what went differently this time around after Brainwork EP?
We branched out in a lot of different directions with this one. Instead of 5 songs we did 11, so we could kinda take it to other areas.
And it’s the first record you did pre-production for, right?
Yeah we literally spent a week at The Pioneer, with Soupy. Five days solid writing with him, and that’s where he really started getting his teeth into things. Normally we’d just record the demos and then go and rerecord them. But this time we were sending them back and forth to him, whe would give us notes, we’d go back to the demos, change stuff. Then in pre-production we would play every song like 50 times and go over every little thing. A lot of structures got changed, a lot of songs got changed.
Was there anything you really didn’t expect to end up on the record?
Well, ‘Guise of a Mother’ was totally ripped apart by Soupy. It was a different structure, rebuilt, and we weren’t really sure. We kept asking each other ‘is this what we want?’, but then after we’d played it a few times we said yeah this is better.
How has having this third-party influence on the songs effected your connection with the songs live?
He’s like a neutral and fresh perspective. The songs are better written, and everything feels smooth. That pre-production really helped iron out all the creases, and it feels natural live. Better than the old stuff.
How have you found 2000 Trees?
Amazing. One of the best festivals. Even if we weren’t playing, it’d be one we’d like to come to. Really nice size. Big, but small. You can get around real easy and you don’t have to buy arena beers. The only problem is phone signal, but it’s nice to be talking to each other for once. [laughs]
“TOTALLY RIPPED APART”
And the set itself?
Amazing. We totally didn’t expect that many people to turn up to our tent. It packed out for us, kids singing along.
For midday on the first day, it was pretty damn impressive.
Yeah, it was incredible.
So what else have you got coming up?
We’ve got Reading, so that should be really fun. We’ve all been going to that for years so we’re really excited. Then we’re out on the road with Beartooth at the end of the year.
You can get Trash Boat’s incredible debut album Nothing I Write You Can Change What You’ve Been Through now on digital and hard formats from the following links.
